PESHAWAR, Jan 5: The Pakistan Campaign to Ban Landmines (PCBL) has urged the government to shelve its plan of laying landmines on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, saying the step would pose serious threats to the lives of the people living on both sides of the Durand Line.

Speaking at a news conference at the press club here on Friday, Faiz Mohammad Fayyaz, director of PCBL, expressed fears that minefields along the border would put the lives of innocent people at a razor’s edge rather than harming the extremists.

"Laying anti-personnel mines alongside the border will pose threat to the civilians," he said. He called upon the government to sign the 1997 Ottawa Mine Ban Convention that called for ban on the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of landmines.

"It is equally distressing that since 1980 communities in Fata along the border areas suffered due to the Afghan war and the use and presence of landmines in Afghanistan," Fayyaz said.

Landmines were airdropped and laid along border areas and generally the weapon proliferated in the Fata that was why the people of Fata also started using landmines in local feuds, he added.

Citing surveys, he said that some 1,389 people suffered landmine injuries in Bajaur and Kurram Agencies which is an ample testimony to the fact that laying mines along the border were dangerous. He said they were striving to educate communities in Bajaur and Kurram Agencies on the threat of landmines since the year 2000 besides carried out rehabilitation services, including physiotherapy, prosthetic devices and crutches in these areas.

“It is a matter of concern that Pakistan has not yet signed the 1997 Ottawa Mine Ban Convention and since we have been striving for the strengthening of the Ottawa Mine Ban Convention," he remarked and besides urged the United States, China, Russia, Iran and India who are also not signatories to sign the convention and take the lead role.

He called upon the government to review its policy and work for an alternate strategy to monitor the border, saying minefields could be breached by intending groups whereas civilians would pay the heaviest price.

"Collateral damage of laying mine fields in the shape of civilian causalities will far outweigh its efficacy in military strategy," he asserted and added mining the border would also affect the economy of poor people, whose businesses were attached in the nearby areas.